


Diamond Edge

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus, Congratulations Everyone's a Troll Now, Fluff and Angst, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gamzee Is Working on the Sopor Thing, How Not to Do Moirallegiance, John Is Working on the Not Freaking Out Thing, Karkat Needs to Stop Borrowing Trouble, M/M, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pale Threesome, Post Game, This Does Not Suck Entirely, Yeah Baby, quadrant shenanigans, really tho, so much pale porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moirails aren't always made of sweetness and light.  Karkat and Gamzee are both very well aware of this.  The game is over, though, so that means they're not going to lose sight of each other again, right?<br/>Right?<br/>It's just, Gamzee has this one tiny little idea about how to fix his palebrother's quadrants...<br/>(Alternatively titled: The Bad Ideas Makara Had That Did Not Actually Involve Sopor)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Lamb, speak it to me in all your loving tongue_  
 _How many times must I fix you before you run_  
 _Out of cracks, out of times, out of pieces unbroken_  
 _Your diamond edge cuts me right the hell open_

Gamzee wakes up because there’s a smell in his hive that doesn’t belong.  
  
Oh shit, is his first thought, and his rage comes up fast enough to give a brother some kind of wicked vertigo, like his thoughts are melting through cracks in his pan cause the anger makes everything better. Anger heals, it’s the miracle the Mirthful Messiahs gave to get thoughts crawling around blasted all to hell and _no, it was just a little bit, this can’t be happening again._  
  
 _Karbro._  
  
Thinking of Karkat is reflexive at this point (and fuck, fuck, fuck the day when it’s not; when Gamzee forgets to think of him) and it jolts the anger back under control, thrashing under the cage Gamzee has built for it. No, gotta keep calm. Gotta keep a brother _calm._ Three deep breaths, just like you promised, and then you’re gonna open your eyes real slow. Yeah, it’s okay just to look. You see anything that’s up and not motherfucking where it’s meant to be, you blink and take another breath. Look again. Easy does it. Just get your ganderbulbs open, cause that’s step one.  
  
Fuck he hears whispers, and that ain’t good. The anger strains at Gamzee—what is this smell, it’s not supposed to be here (is this real? Fuck, his eyes won’t open, he don’t want to see—he doesn’t want to see blood on the walls, doesn’t want that faint whisper getting all up in his ears and talking a mess about where could use a fresh coat of miracle vein-paint. Stop. He’s gotta… get his pan on straight. Make it stop.  
  
StOp—  
  
“Shit,” he hears that whisper go, and then something bumps against his snout and it’s warm and soft and ain’t nothing like blades or blood. After a minute, Gamzee takes a breath. Relaxation floods his senses all tidal-like, and his eyes open up automatically.  
  
It’s midday, and his hive should be drenched in peaceful darkness, curtains all drawn to stave off the sun. Instead, he’s met with light—a glowing set of eyes, pupils standing out in sharp contrast to all that blaze. His spine done up and melted all of a sudden and Gamzee is grinning without any real sense of relief, just cause that’s the shape his face makes when he gets a righteous whiff of his moirail’s skin.  
  
It’s miracles, plain and simple. “Hey best friend,” Gamzee rasps, reaching up to grope for the fingers attached to Karkat’s arm. Karkat’s strategy for getting a brother out of his panic is to shove himself up in Gamzee’s personal space cause his heartbeat is actually a pretty solid reminder that Gamzee’s gotta calm the fuck back down. Karkat’s claws link around his a little too tight—Gamzee frowns, what’s a motherfucker so cold for?—and they shake a little, jangling like teeth trying to talk.  
  
“Did I scare you?” Karkat asks. He don’t sound too good, all subdued and sleepy-like, except for how his eyes are as wide as the rings around the moon, and he broken into Gamzee’s hive in the middle of the day, when all motherfuckers with a rational understanding of time would be getting their snooze on. Karkat’s voice is a little guilty when he adds, “I honked the horn.”  
  
Neither of them is real great about letting other trolls get up in their territory, especially not these days. Gamzee’s got a signal for the brothers and sisters he’s got a wicked empathy for, such that he don’t need them escorted to be comfortable. He knows the tone of each horn he’s ever offered. Karkat called it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard when Gamzee explained what it was he wanted, and he’s done it like Gamzee asked ever since. Ain’t forgotten even once.  
  
“Was asleep,” Gamzee says, even though he’s in his pod and it’s obvious.  
  
“Sorry.” Not often that Gamzee hears that kind of noise from his palebro. His ears prick up, and it don’t sound none too right with Karkat all hushed. “I was—fuck, I was being a sneaky asshole. I was hoping I wouldn’t wake you.” And that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? Gamzee decides that this recupercoon is entirely too empty and needs a little crimson-blooded miracle all burrowed in.  
  
Karkat yelps when Gamzee sets his hands on, but it’s only a moment and then he shivers and goes all blanket soft the way Gamzee can’t help but like ( _you don’t deserve none of that, you know what’s up and happened last night_ ). He’ll deny it, but Karbro is eternally the littlest miracle, just right for wrangling into slime pods and draping around until Gamzee’s bones have that funny ache that means he’s made room for someone in his personal space. That someone is and always will be his moirail (or his flushbrother; somehow Gamzee’s gotten his claws around two sets of miracles), and if Gamzee is maybe getting his sniff on, trying to levitate his thinkpan on conciliatory pheromones, he ain’t got to be sharing that with no one but Karkat, who’s doing the exact same thing.  
  
Shit. Not much gets Karkat to the state where he needs Gamzee’s scent in him to get back down to his skin. Karkat’s voice is terse, even all spooled around Gamzee like a witch’s yarn. “Give me a problem,” he says.  
  
Well fuck. Ain’t too common he says it so plain either; and Gamzee has a hunch what has his brother all tangled in knots now. But you let a motherfucker get to his business in his own time, and that’s what Gamzee does.  
  
“You got it, best friend,” Gamzee says, and curls a hand real careful behind Karkat’s head in case his moirail is in a prickly mood. Karkat doesn’t flinch, just leans into it like he’s as touch-starved as he was when the game started. The first time Gamzee put an arm around his shoulders he jumped and shivered the whole time. Gamzee caught him later, tracing the same path with his hands, making broken little chirps fit to make a brother’s gastic sac start rowing in circles. This time Karkat just rumbles in a silent purr, easy as pie.  
  
Gamzee strokes as he says, “Something got me up and thinking today…” And he tells Karkat about just random shit—not even precise problems, cause Gamzee doesn’t have the pan space for organizing all the mumbling he does in Karkat’s direction. Half of it is about this bunch of wrigglers that come and were all up and making noise in his lawnring—NoIsY aS hElL, mOtHeRfUcKeR, aLl Up AnD dIsTuRbInG hIs CaLm—and half of it is, “Ain’t you the brightest shining diamond, all up and making a brother pity like this?” and the sweet silly words that get to dripping when pale feelings boil over. They’re noodles, and this pity is all running down the sides of them.  
  
Karkat grunts occasionally, mostly silent, just nuzzling Gamzee’s skin. He’s listening for problems and parceling them away in that wicked trap of a thinkpan. It ain’t like Sollux turning out pages of code that make the world turn, but Karkat has got pan enough for a whole brotherhood, and he likes it packed to popping. They both know Karkat eases himself into pale territory. Like he’s gotta up and prove that he’s worth jamming with for starters, and then he can unburden whatever ain’t meshing so good with the rest of that gnarled-up pan. He’s gotta fix somebody before he can stand to let a brother’s pity near him.  
  
“If the kids show up tomorrow, I’ll track them and personally check in with their lusii,” Karkat murmurs, head heavy on Gamzee’s shoulder. Real comfortable like; Gamzee hopes he never moves, keeps right on accepting Gamzee’s personal space as his right. “There are other places to play.” And Gamzee needs the calm. Karkat pokes Gamzee in the ribs instead of saying that. “And fuck, I can’t believe you broke your carbohydrate charring quadrilateral _again._ I’ll fix it in the morning, and then you’re going to eat until you’re miserable, while I watch you like a dragon with fucking nitroglycerine shoved up its ass.”  
  
Gamzee snickers in spite of himself. “Shit, bro.” His fingers comb sleeping slime through Karkat’s. It’s not sopor—that’s one of the problems Karkat fixed real early on. Gamzee didn’t need to have any wicked temptations lingering in his hive. This new stuff ain’t quite the same as sopor, not as good, but it’s close and it don’t do more than swallowing soap does to your thinkpan.  
  
Gamzee shivers off a bout of guilt. He can feel how loose Karkat’s gotten, muscles unwound against him like he ain’t got the strength to smoosh a fly. Now’s as good a time as any. “You wanna say why you up and gotta get your diamond on in the middle of a brother’s sleeping cycle?”  
  
“Wasn’t trying to wake you,” Karkat mutters, which isn’t any kind of answer. Gamzee just pats him indulgently. Karkat huffs a breath. “Look, I was with John—I said some shit.” His voice dips. “Some _emphatically stupid shit_ , god, there is something massively wrong with Past Me, _ugh._ ” Gamzee tilts his head back against the lip of the slime pod. He makes sure to keep his hands real gentle on Karbro, but the anger ain’t entirely settled and it wants to direct itself at the first thing that squawks. Can’t be letting that happen again. He ain’t got any strife with John.  
  
Karkat admits gratingly, “Didn’t go well.” Snarls. “Of _course_ it didn’t go well. I don’t know what I was expecting, besides someone finally ordering a cull of all things indescribably stupid and putting me out of my fucking misery.”  
  
It’s pretty clear what Karkat was expecting. Gamzee’s fierce-as-wrath-itself miracle of a palebro up and turned _diurnal_ for this kid. When the game blasphemed its last and the survivors drank in its salvation and breathed every miracle of rebirth and resurrection into this new, holier Alternia (what their ancestors whisper “Beforus” and Gamzee knows wicked true as “Paradise”), Karkat didn’t slow his sprint for a breath. He found John and his human brothers and sisters hiding out in a cave, bearing their new horns and hungers. Confused in their new flesh, yes, and shaken enough that Jade tried to take Karkat’s head off his shoulders, but whole. Gamzee could have fallen to his knees just from the look on his palebrother’s face when he got his arms around them.  
  
Ain’t no miracle he’ll remember before that one, the night Karkat retrieved their missing clade and took them home.  
  
He’s been playing lusus for them ever since, like he comes by it honest. Keeping their hours, guiding their rages, showing them the mirth of the stars. And for John (always for that blue brother), Karkat drank poison like it wasn’t nothing but a glass of water. Gamzee’s moirail throws all the wonders of his spectrum growls and his wicked word-flow, and his fucking _smiles_ at the brother’s feet, gives him the kind of time and attention you just don’t see places outside of Karbro’s relentlessly romantic pan. Wants to give him sweeps, shows it plain on his face. John takes Karkat’s thoughts and sets them spinning something dizzy, takes him till he don’t know up from down, and he stumbles along after John all flushed to hell and back.  
  
This ain’t the first time Gamzee’s brother has tried to make his thinking clear. Even if Karkat ain’t saying it now, after those “emphatically stupid” words turned into a big sticky-hurting lump in his throat, it’s pretty obvious what had him all needing his moirail. The flush he has for John is a flush that don’t care the slightest bit for logic or what Karkat wants; you put him in a room with John and you watch Karkat fall into orbit like he don’t know nothing else.  
  
It reminds Gamzee a little of Tavbro and how that up and went sideways when he was trying to get Tavros’s attention and make him just think on it a bit. All Gamzee was saying those days was how good he knew they’d be together and how he was flushed all volcano red for a certain motherfucker, like that should cancel out all objections. Basically, stupid shit (then again, he ain’t seen no one deal with quadrants and stay rational; he’s pretty sure Sollux and Aradia are still kidnapping each other on the regular). But Tavros ain’t like nobody else; he’s got twice as much space in his pusher as any troll could bear. He actually _listened_ to that noise for some crazy-ass reason. He was willing to give a brother a chance to do something other than choke on his stammering. And even with the entire universe burning black around them, Tavros spoke pity, he found forgiveness, his motherfucking ghost took Gamzee by the horns and steered him round until Gamzee was looking him in the eyes and Tavros said, “I am really sick and tired of watching you do this to yourself, Makara. Shape the hell up, because I’m all through missing my friends.”  
  
Ain’t no one but Tavros able to wield a flush so well that he could beat a brother back into his own pan with it. Likewise, ain’t no one but Tavros who up and waits till his own death to figure out if he wants to try a matespritship either, but Gamzee had the particular good fortune of being able to wait that long.  
  
However, Gamzee ain’t at all convinced that Karkat has the same luck in store, because he thinks there ain’t a troll alive what would be able to withstand Karkat’s red courting unless they don’t see the interest from the fundamentals.  
  
Gamzee doesn’t try to make it better, cause he’s already doing what he can, hands on Karkat’s flesh, keeping him close and feeling him start to warm up a little. “Aw, that ain’t nothing to drive you up a wall. You thinking on it too much, brother?”  
  
Karkat’s breath leaves him in a sigh “I’m—“ he cuts himself off and growls out, “—fine.” Gamzee wants to snort at that. That’s absolute shit all for making a motherfucker believe. Karkat nuzzles closer until a horn is leaned against him all hard and curved; Gamzee reads it like palms and crystal balls. Makes him hug his arms a little tighter to his heartsick palebro. “Anyway, I already pitched my fucking fit. I’m not here for that. I just couldn’t…”  
  
“Calm down?” Gamzee runs a hand between a motherfucker’s shoulders. Karkat’s spine sticks out through his sweater. Gamzee isn’t the only one needing to get his nutrition on. He likes how Karkat squirms when he does that, though. “Gotcha right here, bro. Chillest pair of motherfuckers that ever were.”  
  
Karkat does snort, crass and wet and it only makes Gamzee grin. “It’s fucking freezing outside. You’re confusing clinical hypothermia with an emotional state which, fuck you, it is not.”  
  
Gamzee’s smile falters a little and he can’t even place why until he asks, “You need another problem, brother?” Fuck. Fuck. Karkat doesn’t need this _at all._  
  
But his moirail has always had this enthusiasm for pain about a solar belt wide—his own pain, other people’s pain, ways to fix it and ways to inflict it; he wears that need like a religion and hasn’t ever let go—and he goes still when Gamzee says his stupid fucking piece. “Yeah, sure,” Karkat says, cautious, hands drifting up to Gamzee’s shoulders. Thinking about going for Gamzee’s horns, probably. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s had to. Gamzee burns.  
  
Not that it’s anywhere near that bad this time; it’s just Gamzee got nervous, was all. Smelling Karkat all sneaking into his hive, it mixed up with a wicked tangle of thoughts and vibes that didn’t have any place in Gamzee anymore. Or shouldn’t. Mostly, shouldn’t.  
  
 _You know what you did._  
  
Gamzee swallows. His voice comes out small. “Ate some of the slime today, brother.” He doesn’t bother specifying. He doesn’t have to. He’s heavy all over with shame and that sick feeling that brackets relief on either side—one for thinking you gotta say it; one for thinking on what they’re going to up and say back—and puts his face in Karkat’s hair to breathe. Karkat still smells pale for him, and he’s about the only part of Gamzee’s body that doesn’t hurt.  
  
Karkat sighs softly, nothing really disappointed, but it still _cuts_ until he wraps his arms around Gamzee’s neck and leans close. Eases the sting, and stretches the anticipation of that edge finding something soft again. Gamzee can’t stop a tremor in his voice. “You mad at me?”  
  
 _He’s touching you, ain’t he? Why give a fuck about anything else?_ Goes one part of Gamzee. The other is all up and, _What does he need to be touching you for? Ain’t you got better things to do than squander the holy sugar your palebro keeps dishing up? If you were really up and pity-white for him, you’d break this diamond because you’re a waste—of air and space and **him**._  
  
Gamzee doesn’t like either of those voices too much, but it’s different when Karkat’s voice comes out all rough to say, “Gamzee, you told me the truth. Of course I’m not fucking mad.” He speaks in edges—sharp little diamond up and cuddled in Gamzee’s arms. His voice is really careful when he asks, “Just… today?”  
  
Fuck that noise. “If you ain’t mad at me, don’t be up and made at yourself either.”  
  
Karkat sighs a little harsher. “ _Gamzee._ ”  
  
“I mean it, bro,” Gamzee squeezes Karkat a little tighter. “You remember? Problems are for solving, and you solve them real good. Ain’t nothing good that comes from my fine palebrother wasting his pan on thoughts that don’t up and belong.” He sighs, nuzzling into the wiry mess of Karkat’s hair. “Ain’t you fault, brother. It’s mine.”  
  
“Oh, no one’s doubting that it’s your own fucking fault,” Karkat says sourly enough to make Gamzee flinch, but that’s just Karkat’s way. He cuts first, and then he gets out his pearly pale threads and gets to sewing up. “Just— _shit._ That advice goes both ways. Stop beating yourself up and let me help. That’s why you told me. Right?” Karkat’s eyes have lit again, luminous with concern and they blaze the prettiest motherfucking colors as Karkat pushes back Gamzee’s hair and looks into his face. “You don’t have to give me the details if you don’t want to, but are you okay? Are you seeing things, did you hurt yourself…?”  
  
“…Motherfucking helps a brother having you here now,” Gamzee admits. Karkat offers him a faint purr, sweet enough to melt the heart out of a guillotine. “Wasn’t even much,” Gamzee murmurs, like he’s trying to convince his palebro. His anger pushes against its cage again. “I didn’t _mean_ to.”  
  
And Gamzee is so sick of telling Karkat that noise. _Didn’t mean to_ s and _Won’t happen again_ s and _I’m sorry_ s. He wants to tell Karkat the good news, spread it like fucking gospel that he’s got himself off of it, that it ain’t always under his skin and laughing at him while he tries to ignore. Wants to scream that there is no truth to how sometimes Gamzee don’t just swear it moves his feet and opens his mouth all by itself. Gamzee has been thinking this for a while now—it won’t do no good to keep talking on it and trying to strife with it cause addiction can’t be defeated, except Karkat’s looking at him and of course it does _some_ good.  
  
“I know you don’t,” Karkat tells him, so motherfucking forgiving when he’s got no cause to be. Gamzee shudders, bears that forgiveness like he bears his addiction, how it goes under his skin and hurts. Karkat is all edges. He doesn’t properly get why saying that thing would cause a motherfucker pain, and he doesn’t know that it cuts straight in a different direction to say, “You don’t have to try right now, okay? I’m here with you and I’ll clobber you if you try to get something that isn’t strictly nutritious down your protein chute.” He kisses Gamzee’s jaw while Gamzee tries to get his pan around that. Karbro’s lips are a pretty motherfucking huge distraction. “Tell me how you want me to help you.”  
  
“Aw, you up and know,” Gamzee says. He fidgets. Ain’t nothing more shaming than begging for comfort after you’ve done a great mess of wrong. It’s not his to have, this pale sweetheart twined around him and cutting in like his favorite knife. “If I’m fit to recall, you’ve heard this tune before.”  
  
Way too many times. Gamzee doesn’t get better, Gamzee bobs up and down, over and under the surface. Gamzee feels like a carnival ride.  
  
“It is,” Karkat says, “ _Motherfucking,_ ” with extra emphasis, a cheap trick to make Gamzee smile. Even if Karkat can’t see it; he knows Gamzee will feel it, and Gamzee does feel a little better right off. “ _Not_ the same tune, Makara. Or did we just leap back through time without my fucking notice? Well shit, someone go and alert Strider that he needs to halt his dipshittery immediately. You just played out the _same_ struggle to the _same_ outcome and you worked up the exact _same_ courage to talk about it, we are officially in a time loop. Fuck everything.”  
  
“Same voice in my pan,” Gamzee offers. “Ain’t never got away from it, don’t think it’s like to ever be heading off on its own.” He doesn’t want his voice to break, so he waits a little before adding, “Sopor’s under my skin all the time. Following me when I ain’t fucked up yet, just to say how I need to be checking a watch and writing down the miracles between the inevitable cause maybe Karbro’s got a sweeter kiss for a difference of  fIvE fUcKiNg MiNuTeS—”  
  
Karkat shooshes Gamzee before he gets any further. There ain’t a goddamn miracle in the world that won’t fit in the palm of Karkat’s hand, Gamzee thinks. Ain’t a motherfucking one, and isn’t that bitchtits, when he’s built all small? The Mirthful Messiahs played a great joke.  
  
Their forenubs push together, a pleasant ache that makes Gamzee feel like Karbro’s thoughts are trying to up and crawl in him. He thinks he’d like that. They’d probably burn a lot less than his own.  
  
When he tries to talk again—even though it’s just babbling about the miracles in this room right now, Karkat kisses him on the lips, soft and porcelain pale. Gamzee shivers all over the good way, and Karkat whispers into him, “The only inevitable thing, Makara, is that I will pity your hopeless ass long after you’ve shaped up and we’ve excavated your head from your waste chute. Since I understand that you cannot even comprehend small words, blink for yes, you will fucking submit to my massive, steroidal pity-glands and stop talking that shit. You want a sweeter kiss, fucking _ask._ ” And he kisses Gamzee again, thumps their noses together and there’s a muffled growl before he’s figured out the logistics and Gamzee has probably never been so happy in his life (except for the next time Karkat kisses him).  
  
Gamzee wishes he could keep kissing Karkat always, pity-pale and on and on until his bloodpusher gave out. No sopor would make it through Karkat’s lips and he thinks with all this joy radiating through him, he wouldn’t have the room to hear a damn thing about sopor slime.  
  
When Karkat leans away his eyes have bloomed star-bright. “Pale for you,” he says, and by the light of his gaze, Gamzee sees him hold out his fingers. Gamzee completes their diamond with a smile he feels to his toes.  
  
“Motherfucking miraculous.” The pads of their fingers feel really warm where they connect. Gamzee hears another elusive fragment of a purr from Karkat, and it brings an answering rumble out of his throat. Slowly, embarrassed, Karkat returns it steady. Heh, a motherfucker still sounds as rusty at that noise as a squeaky spring. He don’t make happy sounds near enough.  
  
Privately, Gamzee concludes that John is like to be extremely addle-panned, roping in a motherfucker like Karkat and not cashing that miracle in. Aloud he says, “Got me up and feeling no more agitation, Karbro.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever,” Karkat snorts, voice too harsh as he struggles to choke down his purr. “Me too. Not that you really did anything.” He says this while he traces a diamond over Gamzee’s bloodpusher, so yeah. Gamzee grins.  
  
“Come on, best friend. Let’s get out motherfucking sleep on, prepare ourselves play out this wicked game again.”  
  
Karkat yawns into his neck and clings. Gamzee breathes him in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I TOLD YOU IT EXISTED. YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE ME forgoodreasoniamsuchaflake BUT LOOK IT EXISTS.
> 
> Also, I believe my Trekkie updates are next. That should be interesting.

_And next we link our jewel to a string_

_We always lose the important things_  
  
This our diamond won’t stay red too long

_Deepen the wound, wash that blood off_

Throat feels clogged up with dust. Mouth tastes like the bad end of a garbage scow. And the nails in his pan all line up and get to work making him really, really sorry he’s conscious.

Worse hell: Gamzee can’t smell his pale brother beyond the lingering traces stuck to his skin. He kicks out with his toes a little anyway, disturbing the slime and hearing himself make another low sound of disappointment when nothing mutant and lovely materializes to run a gentle hand over what Gamzee self-indulgently concludes to be a corpse that ain’t quite got the memo yet.

He lies still in the slime for a little while, playing dead and hoping the suffering’ll go away, but it don’t. There's a couple of clatters down the stairs, which make his ears perk up a little. Ah, and all of a sudden he hears a landslide of curses in his moirail’s cranky tone. Gamzee gets out about half of Karkat’s name in a whisper before it’s back to a slow death by sopor hangover.

On the positive side, he really has been off it a while, cause he damn sure didn’t take much yesterday and it’s been a hell of a long while since he felt the toxicity of it like _this_.

Eventually, Gamzee musters the willpower to venture out of the recupercoon. He’s still got a little seed of warmth lodged up between his ribs and it makes him get a little warm in the face remembering the righteous sweet pacification with his little palebro draped all over him. Doesn’t even feel as sick, thinking about it and he shuffles down the stairs, motivated by wanting to see Karkat. Once he does get an eyeful, Karkat is stunning as can be. Also covered in flour, and he is spewing some truly vile noise at something smoking in a skillet. Gamzee’s mouth twitches. He considers just sitting down (room is kinda doing a seesaw deal and he doesn’t like it much) and watching Karkat, but Karkat’s eyes slide over to him and he’s all prickled up and glaring for just two seconds before something softer dents it.

“Hey,” he says, nonchalant as Karkat can manage— _naw, bro, I ain’t paleflirted with you hard as to pop your pusher last morning—_ his ears go red and Gamzee grins.

“Hey.”

“Food,” his moirail gestures. He scrapes a lopsided pancake out of the skillet. It kinda crunches some, and Gamzee suspects it ain’t meant to do that, but fuck if he isn’t leaning his head into the wall and gone all squishy inside with miracle pity. “Such as it is,” Karkat sighs, slinging another glop of batter into the skillet. “Dunno. Might be as likely to eat through our internal organs and provide us a swift and meaningless death. Fucking _stop that_!” This last bit is added at the skillet, which becomes the victim of some incensed prodding. Karkat’s voice is a little too loud and it doesn’t do Gamzee’s sore head any favors, but damn, them red little ears.

“Sit before you fall over,” Karkat suggests. Gamzee does. Karkat passes him a mug of something that doesn’t look quite right, but smells an awful lot like tea. Gamzee, being unaware that he had tea in his hive. When the dull pain in his hide starts receding, he gets why Karkat might have stashed some around.

The shame of having broken his word comes crawling back up. He sips some more tea, doesn’t ask. Finds Karkat’s hand between his horns a bit, warm and putting his head a little lower just to feel it. Karkat scratches along his scalp with blunt little claws a bit until he wrests a burned pancake free and sits down opposite Gamzee. He declares succinctly, “We could just starve. It might be the wiser choice.”

Gamzee helps himself to a pancake—Karkat growls and whips a plate under it as Gamzee takes a bite. Besides the crunch, it ain’t half bad. Warm and a little gooey in the center. Karkat put bugberries in them, which was ambitious of him, and which they both know Gamzee hasn’t earned, but Gamzee grins halfway from the sentiment. The kitchen smells like his sweetheart, the pancakes actually ease the twisting in his guts, and the tea has his thinkpan halfway to operational. He takes another bite and purrs as he chews, which makes Karkat roll his eyes. Karkat makes the funniest face when he takes a bite of his own, shooting Gamzee an accusatory kind of look, like _why would you trick me into eating this_ , but it goes halfway wobbly with a smile. Karkat nudges one of Gamzee’s slime-sticky feet with his dry one.

“You’re such a mess,” he mutters, and puts his hand back in Gamzee’s hair. Ain’t that always the way? Gamzee can’t remember what in the hells possessed him to stick poison down his protein chute, talks up and down at how he won’t be doing that again, and then the craving comes back up on him. Karkat tells him that it’s Gamzee’s imagination, that the urges actually get weaker as Gamzee holds out, but it feels like basic mathematics. Each hour he ignores it is another degree of magnitude until Gamzee’ll open his mouth just to make the ringing in his ears stop.

He _should_ have called Karkat instead. Karkat’s come each time he was called, the steady kind of diamond you can build foundations on, and he’s pacified every urge and horror that Gamzee’s opened up to him, some permanent-like.

But Gamzee doesn’t want to be calling him every second of every day to talk at how he fails at this so simple a task, _just don’t be eating none of it_ , and the real answer there is that he likes it just fine when he admits to the failing and Karkat comes and washes every thought clean. Maybe he just don’t want to use up his palebro’s consideration. He don’t want to see the time when he calls and Karkat ain’t got time for it or just loses patience. Gamzee’s got wicked empathy for the little fucker and his temper, and he talks Karkat down from screaming pacing _whywhywhy did I say that?_ more than he should have to for it not to be Karkat’s way, him liable to bite when gentleness is needed. Fuck if Gamzee don’t love him more for his faults. Gamzee could forgive it just fine. But well, before Karkat got his claws in deep enough to Gamzee’s diamond, Gamzee was wasn’t worth the time it’d take to gut him. It took Karkat a while, but he dragged Gamzee up from the depths there is ample fucking reassurance of what lurks under his calm being nothing good. The good pieces are Karkat’s. And if Karkat goes, then Gamzee don't want to see what comes next.

So Gamzee doesn’t call, and now Karkat’s hand gets gentler, right around the hornbeds and Gamzee pretty narrowly avoids drooling pancake back onto his plate as the world goes fuzzy and vague. “Nhm,” he murmurs, leaning into the touch. Karkat snorts, pressure easing enough for Gamzee to have a thought. The food is finished and then they go and get their motherfucking cuddle on, hell yeah.

“How you feeling?” Karkat asks. His little palm cups the whole side of Gamzee’s face with a pap and it’s sooo nice. Ain’t nobody could resist. Little fucker is a gift from the Messiahs themselves.  
  
“M’good,” Gamzee mumbles, all warm and full and probably on a date right now, if either of them bothered with dates.

Karkat snorts. “You look a little less like a reanimated corpse,” he allows. “And you’re not flinching anymore.”

Gamzee makes a face into the table. “Wasn’t flinching at all.”

“Oh please. You flinched at the fucking overhead _light_ , Makara.”                   
  
“Didn’t.”

Karkat growls. Gamzee lifts his head enough, and cups a bigger palm around Karkat’s knuckles. “Better,” he tells him, seeing where Karkat’s coming from. “Lots better.” His eyes flicker down and there’s another determined pap to his cheek.

“Not that it doesn’t give me that special thrill in my tingly bits to watch you kicking the shit out of yourself,” Karkat snorts, “But cut it the fuck out.” Gamzee hears himself grumble. Karkat paps him again, just hard enough to thunk Gamzee’s head into a cushion. “I mean it, Gamzee.”

“Would be half as more beneficial if _my palebro_ would get that kind of thinking on himself,” Gamzee murmurs. “You’re the best Alternia ever spawned. No call for nobody to get on with hating you, ‘less they had spades for it.” Karkat barks out a laugh that sounds unkind.

“Gamzee,” he drawls. “I’m not the one who needs to be pacified.” Gamzee, strewn on the upholstery, getting the shit papped out of him, raises eyebrows. “Look, I get it.” Karkat’s voice gets a little less tight when he tries to get something he wants. His version of persuasiveness is just acting like he doesn’t want it. Gamzee kind of rolls his eyes some. “And believe me, I am dancing a fucking jig inside about how you feel bad about this. You should feel bad. You fucked up.” Gamzee gets papped in the eye. “Shoosh. You feeling like crap _is_ a good thing, asshole, it’s better than deluding yourself into thinking you’ve got it under control. If you feel like shit, it’s because you know you can do better.”

Naw man, the disappointment in Karkat’s eyes hurts like bleeding and infection. Hangovers and a little self-recrimination don’t have nothing on it.

(And besides, so far, the cravings keep on keeping on.)

But Karkat isn’t done murmuring to him, “But after the fuck ups comes the part where _I_ forgive you, and you don’t get to feel like shit for that. It’s my choice, and I am damn well going to keep choosing you, so will you cut it out?” His fingers go through Gamzee’s hair. “Get over it. It happened. Let it just be the past.”

“Done and settled,” Gamzee protests, which ain’t quite true, but he has kind of given up on wishing the floor would swallow him while Karkat keeps touching him. It is a physical impossibility to want to be anywhere else than where you are when Karkat gets his hush on.  
  
Karkat sounds a little bit amused as he points out, “Gamzee, we’ve been sitting here for more than an hour and you haven’t tried to climb all over me.”

Oh.

Gamzee sits up a little and Karkat lets him, easing his hand back. Somehow they do wind up all tangled, most every time. Miracles and pale.

“You don’t mind?” Gamzee says a little halfheartedly, because that is a weak-ass excuse. Karkat arches an eyebrow and alright, Gamzee is feeling a little delicate for any manner of acrobatics, but he squirms up and there’s Karkat, compact and warm and admittedly the best thing ever. Gamzee sighs through his nose and scoops him up real gentle. Karkat folds into him and melts there. Arms around his neck, nuzzled up to Gamzee’s throat. There’s a shade of a purr. Some last little bit of inner sickness comes undone and Gamzee buries his face in Karkat’s warmth, humming with it, and getting good and lost. Karkat goes for his horns, which is frustrating like nothing else, because Gamzee can’t think after that.

Pale as white sand and sun-bleached shells. Karkat cleans Gamzee to bone and ash, painless. He rests his head on Gamzee’s shoulder, touching lips to his pulse while Gamzee’s throat aches with purrs.

“Fucking pale Jegus,” Gamzee groans, his first words in a while that weren’t a stumbled rendition of his moirail’s name. He feels Karkat smirk, and gets a little wobbly in the thoracics.

“Flattery gets you nothing, jackass.”

Gamzee makes a wordless, happy sound. Karkat’s calloused fingers crook into his and all the nerve endings go soupy with contentment.

“So what do you want to do today?” Karkat mutters, shifting again to catch Gamzee’s eye. In the early dusk light, his gaze is all dim glitter and softness. “We could go for a walk, see if some bloodflow can’t be jarred to your thinkpan on accident. Or—“

“John,” says Gamzee, which gets him a warning look.

“—Or we can do literally anything _but_ talk about John.”

This is a baldfaced lie. Karkat always wants to talk about John. Get him started and it comes busting out like a cracked dam, just ranting and raving and working himself up into knots that make Gamzee laugh. Motherfucker has it _bad_ , like his thinkpan is exploding with it. Normally Gamzee is down for helping Karkat get his poetry on, but that’s not what he’s thinking now. He eases a hand up to cup the back of Karkat’s neck, distract him with a shiver from cooler skin.

“How’s his quadrants looking?”

“You know he’s got jack shit in that area,” Karkat snaps, prickled up as could be. Gamzee strokes the back of his neck a couple of times. Karkat’s blinking goes confused. “It’s not like I don’t… make an ass of myself in most of them. On a regular basis.”  
  
Terezi used to get to him like that too. Only these days their teal sister has all her quadrants done and dealt with between Vriska and Dave, and she’s still got a tight bond of friendship with Karkat, the miracle of two trolls who love each other like clade without needing a quadrant for it.   
  
Now it’s John, Karkat bounces from pitch to flushed for, even ashen, and with no less enthusiasm.  
  
“But, in the realest real, you pity him?”                   
  
Karkat chokes some, and goes red enough his face feels like boiling. Gamzee grins, kisses his lips, cuddles his palebro back to melting. “Gamzee,” Karkat finally says, whining. “ _Shut up_.”

“What, a brother can’t get his meddle on none when he’s feeling his diamonds?” Gamzee grins until Karkat’s scowl goes a little confused. “Give it due ponder ‘fore you say no. I got every interest that your quadrants be filled.” He curls his fingers into Karkat’s hair, gently, and makes his suggestion, “vacillate your way in.”

Karkat grimaces his face full of creases. “Yeah, I am a pitch stud,” he says flatly. Gamzee waits. “Only problem is that he doesn’t have the slightest fucking interest in my scrawny ass in any damn quadrant. It’s not a matter of red or black, it’s just _me_ he doesn’t want.” Karkat says this tonelessly, reciting lines. Yeah, but his memorization skills still do him no favors when John looks his way and he trips over thin air. Gamzee gives him a firm kiss to the temple even though Karkat is so sharply calm about it. He recognizes an act when he sees one. Karkat hides against his throat again with a groan that sounds like, “fuck homosexuality.”

“Naw, bro,” Gamzee says after he’s got Karkat relaxed again. “I ain’t talking about the concupiscence quadrants. If you get your musing on about it, don’t it seem like he’s avoiding those?”

Karkat huffs. “He’s not.”

“None of them are filled.”

“Trust me, he’s not.” This is said with a tone of grudging finality. “Just because he didn’t fill them, doesn’t mean he’s not interested.”

Which, in a moment, will prove Gamzee's point.  
  
Dave’s the only one who has been romancing, and that’s just because Terezi and him were already there beforehand. Whatever malfunction came with getting one hide exchanged for another, she saw to it and it’s plain to see her and Dave got their thing settled. The rest of the human brothers and sisters are a little less at ease—Jade and Feferi have been sort of dancing around each other too, and Gamzee has bets with Tavros about how soon Rose and Kanaya will end up back together once Rose ain’t vacillating through all four quadrants once a day (Gamzee bet on sooner rather than later. Kan-sis has been showing up at Rose’s hive with fresh flowers and a determined expression every day for a week now).

John, on the other hand, smells like the right pheromones and looks at trolls the right way—then packs himself as far away from them as he can get, like he’s afraid of his own claws. Being fair, he probably is.

And so there’s your problem—brother is scared of the quadrants themselves.  They're too unlike what human must have been.  
  
Plus Karkat really isn’t any kind of good at romancing trolls. His personality snags and snarls and he fucks it up every time. Gamzee only kept quadrant with him because of Karkat’s need to keep people alive even when they didn’t deserve it, so he can attest to the fact that Karkat is really shitty at the beginnings of it.  The flirting, and the taking caution? He needs a damn chaperone for the first half of it—but then he hit his stride with the pale and about broke Gamzee’s heart filling it up so fast.  He cares so damn much and got no understanding on how to show it.

Of course Karkat picked the one troll potentially more damaged in the romancing area than he is to go tripping flat on his face for, but Gamzee has the wickedest idea on how they might get around that.

“Not what I meant,” Gamzee says carefully. Karkat huffs.

“He doesn’t even get what ashen _is_.”

“Meant the more piteous kind, brother.”

After a long pause, Karkat sits up halfway. His stare is wide-eyed and Gamzee is very still. “You’re not serious,” Karkat says slowly.

“Serious as bones,” Gamzee answers, and gives another cautious stroke to the back of Karkat’s head. Karkat slaps his hand away in a burst of furious motion.

“I am not,” he says with heat, “Going to flip pale for John Egbert. Jegus fucking Christ, Gamzee, what the _shit_?” There’s hurt in his tone now, and Gamzee is already nuzzling up to him to ease it. Karkat growls in the back of his throat, thumps him upside the horns like an irritated lusus, and then settles all at once. “ _Explain_.”

“Egbert ain’t all there,” Gamzee says gently. “Not with one hide switched for another, and not with instincts he ain’t had the sweeps to grow into. You said it yourself, brother; human romance didn’t make one damn bit of sense. And here’s Egbert, thinking like a human and feeling like one of us. He’s avoiding quadrants because they don’t make sense to him yet.”

There’s an explosive sigh and Karkat nudges his lips into Gamzee’s ear. “I am _not_ pale for anyone but you, asshole.”

“You’d get a shot, though.” Karkat inhales, presumably because he’s got a snappy comeback about how no one has a shot, before Gamzee puts in, “Pale ain’t a threat. You talked on it to me before, how Strider and Lalonde didn’t see how pale could be romance. But it’s red, you know? And it gets to the heart of _any_ troll. You give him reasons not to be afraid of keeping you close, you’d have a shot because Egbert ain’t exactly complicated.” Again, Karkat musters a protest, but Gamzee shooshes him right off the bat. John ain’t half so deep as Gamzee's flustered moirail assumes he is. He’s not some unreachable enigma, he’s a kid like any one of them, not knowing his ass from his protein chute more often than not. “I’m saying get him red, and then show him how matesprits love.”

“You want me to fuck with his head,” Karkat says flatly. “You want me to get past his defenses with my own insidious agenda and manipulate the shit out of someone who’s vulnerable and trusts me.”

Gamzee considers this and then gives firm nod. “Yep. You’re good at pale, and I know you’re flushed for him something genuine. The worst he can do is tell you no.”

“What if he decides he _likes_ pale?” Karkat points out skeptically. Gamzee sort of shrugs—Karkat’s good at pale, but he and John aren’t serendipity. Gamzee’s got that one all to himself, so thank you for coming out, but no.

“Look—me and you,” Karkat swallows, and his voice comes out hoarse. “It’s not exactly something I want to fuck with, okay? We’re… special.”                   
  
“Serendipitous,” Gamzee puts in with a smile and Karkat ducks his head and kind of makes a happy noise. Gamzee nuzzles until Karkat gives a little sigh and hugs on him. “Brother,” Gamzee murmurs, “Nothing is going to get out of hand. You and me, we’re solid. And you and Egbert are solid too, I’ve seen how he trusts you, how you drop your guard to him. Just got to find a way to let it happen, alright?”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“That so bad you won’t even give it a shot?”

After a moment Karkat shakes his head.

“Good,” Gamzee says. He strokes back some of Karkat’s messy hair and places a few kisses on his hot brow. “Kay then. We got our itinerary for the day then, don’t we?” At a questioning look from his moirail, he says with relish, “We’re gonna have to get you all cleaned up for your diamond date.” After a moment, he corrects himself, “Our diamond date, I guess.”

Karkat blinks. His mouth opens, then closes in a bemused frown.

“I’ll be coming along, if you have no objection.” Gamzee sits up stretching. He and Karkat been rolling around in feelings jams and affection for long enough that he’s kinked up and stiff. He pops out his joints as he points out, “Egbert doesn’t have a clue how quadrants work, right?”

More importantly, Karkat needs a chaperone. He really does come up with the dumbest shit to say when he’s got himself worked up. So Gamzee’ll hitch a ride and pap him quiet when he starts to shoot himself in the foot. Ain’t no hardship. And more to the point, if Karkat ain’t giving up on him, Gamzee _sure is_ gonna give this his best shot. He grins impishly to his moirail. “We’ll tell him you can have pale for more than one. Simple enough.”

Karkat blinks again. “Huh,” he says, shaking his head. “Well. This is shouldn't be awkward at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> I said on Tumblr that there was pale porn. Lo and behold, pale porn. Simply the best kind of porn there is. And lookit, this first chapter is so cute, what with them not causing each other grievous emotional wounds.  
> Writing Gamzee's voice is weird. If anyone feels the need to discuss the fact that his grammar is bad, you can take it up with my middle finger.  
> So... this fic isn't going to be very long. Maybe four, five chapters?  
> Anyway, lemme know if you see opportunities for improvement.


End file.
